I grew up in Preston, Nova Scotia. A small community outside of Halifax where nobody was handing you a playbook for how to break into the marketing industry. There were no family connections to agencies for me. No internships at big firms waiting for me. What I had was curiosity… and a willingness to figure things out on my own.
I started with what I had (a laptop being held together with duct tape) and a whole lot of hunger to break out.
So that’s what I did.
Don’t get me wrong.
I have a degree in Marketing. I’m not saying it wasn’t helpful.
But I do think there’s a lot of talent out there that could succeed in marketing and sales without the degree.
Is the degree helpful? 100%.
It opened up doors and gave me a network I could tap into years later.
But my # 1 class.
My # 1 mentor…
My # 1 professor…
Well…
It’s called “The Internet”
And the role of the internet in teaching me my craft has fundamentally shaped how I think about talent.
When I’m hiring at Foundation, we’re not scanning resumes for fancy school names or brand-name agency logos.
We’re looking for something way harder to fake.
We’re looking for curiosity & a growth mindset.
The Credential Trap
Here’s what I’ve seen play out dozens of times. Someone shows up with a stacked resume. Big agency experience. Maybe a marketing degree from a top program. They look incredible on paper.
Then you put them in front of a B2B SaaS client who needs a distribution strategy for a niche audience… and they freeze. They default to the same playbook they ran at their last job. They wait for someone to tell them what to do next.
Meanwhile, someone else on the team who came from a completely different background… maybe they were a freelance writer, maybe they taught themselves SEO by ranking their own blog, maybe they spent two years deep in Reddit communities learning how real people talk about software… that person is already three steps ahead. They’re pulling threads. They’re asking better questions. They’re connecting dots nobody else sees.
That’s curiosity in action. And it beats credentials almost every single time.
What Curiosity Actually Looks Like in Marketing
When I say curiosity, I’m not talking about some vague personality trait. I mean something specific. Something you can spot in how someone works.
Curious marketers do things like…
They dig into the data before they pitch the idea. They don’t just say “let’s do a LinkedIn campaign.” They’ve already looked at what’s working, what the audience cares about, what competitors are missing.
They go where the audience actually hangs out. Forums. Reddit. Slack communities. They don’t just read the marketing blog recap… they go to the source.
They ask why something worked, not just what worked. Big difference. Anyone can screenshot a high-performing post. Curious people reverse-engineer the mechanics behind it.
They stay obsessed with learning. New platforms. New formats. New distribution channels. They’re not waiting for a manager to send them a course. They’re already halfway through it.
They challenge assumptions. Including mine. Some of the best ideas at Foundation have come from someone on the team saying “I think there’s a better way to do this.” That takes curiosity and courage.
They obsess over studying the ins and outs of a platform in a way that makes everyone else think they’re nuts. For me, it was writing about the LinkedIn algorithm back in 2017 which led to the engineering team at LinkedIn reaching out to discuss my findings.
So Why Does This Matters More Now Than Ever?
The marketing industry is changing faster than most people realize.
AI is rewriting the rules of search. Generative engine optimization is becoming a real discipline. Reddit is changing the SERP. Ads are now available in ChatGPT. TikTok and clippers are having a serious moment. Creators are more influential to a brand than CMOs in some industries. It’s absolutely a wide open playing field for those who are willing to get curious and tinker.
The channels that worked two years ago might not work the same way in two years from now.
Better yet…
They might not work two months from now.
And it’s not just credentials that will help you win in that era. It will be a commitment to tinkering, learning from the ground up and doing the hard work when no one is looking. And that’s the kind of people you want on your team.
If you’re only qualified to do what’s already been done… you’re already behind.
The people who thrive in this next era of marketing are the ones who are constantly asking “what’s next?” and then going and figuring it out.